Thought this may be of interest,
Jamal
----------
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Articles
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
_________________________________________________________________
April 10, 1998
ON LINE
Standards Are Issued for Digital Labels on Educational Web Pages
A group of universities and corporations has completed a set of
digital labels -- known as metatags -- that will make finding
educational materials on the World-Wide Web easier.
The tags, invisible to Web users, are designed to be read by advanced
search engines, so that when people look for educational materials on
line, the search engines can assemble lists of resources that best
match the users' needs.
Officials of EDUCOM, a nationwide consortium of university and
corporate technology users, posted specifications for the metatags on
a Web site (http://www.imsproject.org).
The specifications outline what kinds of information should be
embedded in the computer code behind both educational Web pages and
Web-based computer programs.
A Web page that complies with the specifications will have metatags
that provide information about the page's contents, who published it,
its title, and when it became available on line, among other details.
The metatags could include additional information, such as whether a
license is required to use a particular computer program.
The tags also will enable computer companies to build software for
courses around a common labeling standard, EDUCOM officials said.
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com
Date: 04/10/98
Section: Information Technology
Page: A33